Bistable perception of symbolic numbers

Junxiang Luo*, Isao Yokoi, Serge O. Dumoulin, Hiromasa Takemura*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Numerals, that is, semantic expressions of numbers, enable us to have an exact representation of the amount of things. Visual processing of numerals plays an indispensable role in the recognition and interpretation of numbers. Here, we investigate how visual information from numerals is processed to achieve semantic understanding. We first found that partial occlusion of some digital numerals introduces bistable interpretations. Next, by using the visual adaptation method, we investigated the origin of this bistability in human participants. We showed that adaptation to digital and normal Arabic numerals, as well as homologous shapes, but not Chinese numerals, biases the interpretation of a partially occluded digital numeral. We suggest that this bistable interpretation is driven by intermediate shape processing stages of vision, that is, by features more complex than local visual orientations, but more basic than the abstract concepts of numerals.

Original languageEnglish
Article number12
Pages (from-to)1-11
Number of pages11
JournalJournal of Vision
Volume24
Issue number9
Early online date17 Sept 2024
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Authors

Funding

Supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI Grant Number JP21H03789 and JP24K03240 (to H.T.).

FundersFunder number
Japan Society for the Promotion of ScienceJP21H03789, JP24K03240

    Keywords

    • adaptation
    • bistable perception
    • number
    • numeral
    • occlusion

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